After 4 months of vigorous work and research – I finally finished adding all the 278 Colorado State Wildlife Areas into The Sports Globe web site. Each SWA entry includes an interactive Google Map that allows you to see where in Colorado the property is located, as well as showing the boundaries of the property.

Included with each property are also the following pieces of information which can be useful to anyone who would use the property for activities like hiking, biking, fishing, hunting and camping to mention a few:

• Directions to the property
• Sunrise and sunset times for a specific property (determined by latitude and longitude coordinates)
• Moon phase information (moon illumination, etc.)
• Best times to hunt and/or fish that specific property
• Weather information for towns or cities near the property
• Amenities that the property offers (camping, fishing, hunting, boating, etc.)

 It is also worth mentioning that a Habitat Stamp is required from the Colorado Division of Wildlife to access most of these properties, which is included in the price of hunting or fishing licenses in Colorado.

If you are interested in accessing these State Wildlife Areas and do not hunt or fish, then the price of a Habitat Stamp is $5.00 per year.

What’s next on the radar – I believe Colorado State Parks, then maybe another state (or two)…

I hope this information is as useful to you, as it has been to me in the past several months.

Regards,

Tom.

For my first blog entry I thought an introduction to “The Sports Globe” would be appropriate.

As the home page says – “The Sports Globe is a community driven web site geared toward the outdoor enthusiasts…” - which the intent of this article is to explain what that means.

The Sports Globe web site allows Archery Shops, Outfitters, Guides and Taxidermists (aka “Service Providers”) to host information about their services, offerings and calendar events - free of charge I may add.

The site categorizes these Service Providers not only by the type of provider they are, but also by the services that they offer and where they are geographically located. This way you could find an Archery Shop in Colorado that offers an Indoor Shooting Range, or an Outfitter/Guide that offers Elk hunts in Arizona.

When a Service Provider registers with the site, they chose the type of provider they are and the related services they offer associated with being that type of Service Provider. In addition to selecting the type of provider they are, the site also collects and displays to visitors of the site their logo (if they have one), web site address, physical address, phone number and email address. The Service Provider is also able to add a content block (or paragraph) of information that gives the viewers of their information more details about them.

Each Service Provider has a page dedicated to them within the site that displays all of their information. On this page visitors can also get detailed driving directions to the Service Provider. To see an example of a Service Provider, you can see Tanglewood Archery’s content.

Using Tanglewood Archery as an example, they are also able to create a “Calendar Event” which would be displayed not only on their page, but also would be displayed in various other places within the site. When a Service Provider creates a Calendar Event, they can include contact information, a paragraph about the event and an attachment such as a registration form, flyer, etc.

Registered Users of the site are also able to do various actions based on the information contained within the site. For example; they are able to create what are known as “Favorites” within the web site. A Favorite is similar to that of a Favorite (in Internet Explorer) or a Bookmark (in FireFox), but is stored and managed within the website. A Favorite could be an Outfitter or Guide, a Taxidermist, an Archery Shop or any combination thereof. It allows the user to save a link that is managed by the site for reference later.

Users are also able to “Register to a Calendar Event” within the site. This allows the user to show all the Calendar Events that they have registered too, as well as set reminders to those events in the way of email(s). Once a user either has a registered event or a reminder attached to an event - they will receive automatic notifications if they are changed (change of location, date or time of the event) by the owner of the event.

Here are some links that provide more details on:

• Registered Users
• Service Provider

Also available on the site are:

• Wildlife Articles and Information
• Computer Desktop Wallpapers (Backgrounds)

I hope this has been helpful in understanding what The Sports Globe does and what services are available.

Regards,

Tom.